Neptune class

On Friday the 28th of February, the Florence academy had a very special day dedicated to our new school wide focus oracy. Oracy is defined as “the ability to express oneself fluently and grammatically in speech”, and to kick this initiative off, Neptune spent the entire day doing speech based activities and games. We played Oracy games like drawing a picture back to back with someone else, who is describing what you need to draw, Articulate, Would you Rather and doing totally spoken lessons. In maths we discussed different problems and in science talked about Spring. Finally we created our very own set of “discussion guidelines” as a class, which we will make sure to stick to whenever we talk to each other during learning and during play.   

In the last two weeks before half term, Neptune class have done been writing a set of instructions for aspiring astronauts about how to go to space. On Monday of week 5 they kicked off by undergoing their own astronaut training, and by the Friday of week 6 had written their own set of instructions, using questions marks, exclamation marks and plenty of adjectives. In RE Neptune have practised their oracy skills, learning how to instigate, build and challenge respectfully in a discussion and having some fantastic conversations around the themes of different bible stories in RE, and about the similarities and differences between Mae Jemison and Tim Peake in history. Now it’s time for a well earned week off as we officially finish the first half of the school year.   

  This week in art, Neptune learned about the difference between abstract and realistic art using the work of Wasilly Kandinsky. We learned about his use of bold colours and geometric shapes, and using some shapes in our classroom, came up with beautiful pieces of abstract art using overlapping shapes and bright, contrasting colours. This half term has been full of art, including in some of our writing lessons, with Neptune class experimenting with print, painting, chalk and pencil.

 It’s hard to believe that we’ve been back to school for two weeks now! Neptune have been settling back in with all sorts of thrilling learning. In computing we’ve been starting a new robotics topic, in RE we’ve been learning a variety of bible stories, in writing we’ve been reading the story Look Up. To learn about the meteor showers featured in the story, we have watched real meteor showers, understood the science behind them, and painted our own meteor shower scene. Now as we enter the third week of term, the children will be writing their own descriptions of a meteor shower scene.

  The last two weeks of term were packed full of festive fun, as Neptune class ended the year with a fantastic nativity, Christmas dinner, Christmas jumper day, and all sorts of festive learning. In RE we learned the details of the Christmas story and how people celebrate the holidays. Further, we didn’t stop our learning in core subjects, but gave everything a bit of a festive twist. From practising our adjectives writing sentences about Christmas jumpers, to festive addition and subtraction colouring.  Now we’re looking forward to what Neptune class will get up to in the New Year!

 In a thrilling week, Neptune class got to meet some of the residents of White Post farm. The children got to see and touch a corn snake, giant African land snail, rabbit, and more fascinating creatures. On top of this, we also had an impressive helping of snow on Monday that made break time far more exciting for the whole week! In our lessons, we learned about subtraction, Islam, and designed our Christmas cards in DT. As we move into the next week, Neptune will be able to try their hand at sewing a Christmas tree design on a card and continuing to practise the songs for our nativity.